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Subsidiarity Assessment: Food Distribution (EUC Report)

My Lords, with your Lordships’ leave I shall also speak to the second Motion in my name. Your Lordships will recall that two weeks ago on 20 October the House was first asked to consider a report from the European Union committee with a reasoned opinion to the effect that in its view a European Union legislative proposal did not comply with the principle of subsidiarity. Our second report of this Session, which is the subject of these Motions, relates to a proposal concerning the distribution of food products to deprived persons in the European Union and contains the recommendation that the House should issue a reasoned opinion on it and on its subsidiarity. Our sub-committee on agriculture, fisheries and environment initially considered the proposal before it came to the Select Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, the chairman of that sub-committee, is present today, but we have agreed that I should move these Motions. I do not need to set out again today at length the legislative background, but I stress that through the second Motion today this House is again being asked to exercise new powers under the treaty of Lisbon that became available only on 1 December 2009. The deadline for submitting such a reasoned opinion to the authorities in Brussels is on this occasion 15 November, so we are in plenty of time to get it in. I turn to the proposal assessed in our report. There is some history which I shall deal with briefly. The food distribution programme, to which the proposal relates, was introduced in 1987, and at that time its primary purpose was to help reduce stockpiles of basic commodities that had been purchased and bought into public intervention stores under the common agricultural policy in order to support prices on the European Union market. Stocks of butter, milk powder, beef, sugar, rice and cereals were released to charitable organisations in participating member states on an annual basis to distribute to the poorer sections of the community. As your Lordships will know, successive reforms of the common agricultural policy in the 20 or more years since then have greatly reduced the level of intervention stocks, combined of course with the improvement in world commodity markets. As a result, the nature of the scheme has altered, with an increasing focus on purchasing products on the open market. The current proposal, amending the regulations previously agreed for the scheme, has several objectives. These include formalising the provision for common agricultural policy funds to be used to purchase goods not just from intervention stocks but also on the open market: widening the range of goods that can be purchased in order to take into account nutritional balance; allowing member states also to give preference to food products of union origin; establishing three-year programmes instead of the current annual rounds in order to allow longer-term planning by member states and charities; introducing co-financing by participating member states, generally at a minimum of 25 per cent of eligible costs, with an annual ceiling of €500 million for co-financing from the European Union budget; and enhancing reporting obligations, both for participating countries and for the Commission. In putting the proposal forward, the Commission has offered a number of justifications for it. They include addressing the problems of hunger, deprivation, poverty and social exclusion in the spirit of the treaty, which states that the Union’s aim is to promote, "““the well-being of its peoples””," and, "““solidarity among Member States””," and to contribute to meeting the CAP’s objectives of stabilising markets and ensuring that supplies reach consumers at reasonable prices. The participation by individual member states in the scheme has always been on a voluntary basis and it will remain so under this proposal. The United Kingdom has not participated in the scheme since the mid-1990s and, in their Explanatory Memorandum to us, the Government have said that this has been because of dwindling UK intervention stocks and the bureaucratic overhead associated with ensuring compliance with the scheme rules in order to prevent fraud. They have also said that they are unconvinced of the merits or appropriateness of the revised proposal. In the Government’s view, the European Union should act only where there are clear additional benefits from collective efforts. As regards the Commission's justification that addressing problems of hunger, deprivation, poverty and social exclusion can be considered to be in the spirit of the treaties, we comment that the spirit of the treaties can be perfectly well respected without European Union action and can, in any case, be promoted by the Union without following this legislative route. Member states are capable of acting individually to address the issues highlighted. As regards the Commission's assertion that purchases from the market contribute to the objectives of the common agricultural policy, we see this as questionable, as the extent of such a contribution must depend on numerous factors, including the quantity of food purchased from the market, any reduction in purchases by deprived persons who become eligible for the scheme and the price paid. We see no reason at all why the Union is better placed to organise the purchase of products from the market than member states. We comment as well that the failure of member states to act is not in itself a reason for the Union to act. In any case, the voluntary nature of the scheme suggests that there is no demonstrable need for action, particularly at the Union level. We conclude that there appears to be no compelling argument to suggest that the Union is better placed than member states to ensure a food supply to its most deprived citizens. We have ensured that the assessment that has been set out in our report has been communicated to national parliaments in other European Union member states. At present, we have heard that only the Swedish parliament may be considering the proposal from a standpoint that is close to ours. Unless several other chambers make similar moves in the next two weeks, the threshold for reaching the formal yellow card is, unfortunately, unlikely to be reached. In my view, that will not prevent the opinion of this House from having a political impact. I am glad to see the Minister nodding at that remark. Let us be clear; the burden of our report is not to stand against measures to help the neediest members of our society, if appropriate, by providing them with food. We recognise that there may well be a need for such action, but we consider that any such action is best taken by national, regional or local governments, who can best assess the needs of their own populations and can also best design measures to meet those needs. The European Union scheme, which is the subject of this proposal, was devised more than 20 years ago in a very different environment, primarily as a channel for siphoning off surpluses from the common agricultural policy. Now it has largely lost that rationale, and the justifications which the Commission is advancing for its continuation seem to us to be ill founded and unconvincing. We see no necessary role for European Union action in this area and, accordingly, we see this proposal as incompatible with the principle of subsidiarity. I beg to move.